Transportation Options

Planning provides basis for making short and long range public transportation decisions. Typical projects include planning efforts that support the economic vitality, increase the safety and security of the transportation system; increase the accessibility and mobility of people and freight; and protect and enhance the environment.

Transportation Options program promotes alternatives to driving such as bicycling, walking, public transit, ridesharing (carpooling and vanpooling), teleworking and compressed work-weeks. The program helps ODOT achieve national and state goals for land use, air quality, congestion management, and energy conservation. The goal is to encourage travelers to choose alternative travel modes for the purpose of reducing auto trips, congestion, and pollution they cause, and to enhance livability, physical health, and activity levels. Drive Less Save More is a mass marketing campaign that promotes transportation options in Oregon. It started in 2005 in the Portland Metro area and was rolled out statewide in 2009. Drive Less Connect is an interactive ride-match service and database launched in 2011. It unifies Oregon's previously fragmented ridesharing services into a system that is both statewide and interstate, since it also includes Washington and Idaho.

Planning

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is developing Oregon's first Transportation Options Plan (TO Plan). The TO Plan is one of several statewide transportation mode and topic plans that further refine and implement the Oregon Transportation Plan's (OTP) goals, policies, strategies, and key initiatives.

The purpose of the Plan is to establish a vision and policy guidance that integrates transportation options in local, regional, and state transportation planning, programming, and investment. …

ODOT provides funding to agencies responsible for ridesharing, park and ride lots, telecommuting programs, and information and incentive programs to encourage the use of alternatives to driving alone. Each region of ODOT determines funding levels for TO programs within the region. The application process varies but typically involves a funding request by the applicant agency for inclusion in the State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP). The TO program is federally funded.

Contact

Crosscutting

See the Reporting and Civil Rights sections of our site for information regarding specific regulations and reporting forms and deadlines in connection with receiving funding for providing general public transportation service.